About the AAA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alianza_Americana_AnticomunistaThe general who hugged Ingrid
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2008/07/05/el-general-al-que-se-abrazo-ingridGeneral Mario Montoya Uribe, head of the army of Colombia Ingrid Betancourt who thanked on Wednesday, having rescued from captivity, has a controversial foja service.
Montevideo. General Mario Montoya Uribe, whom Ingrid Betancourt hugged shortly after being rescued from captivity of a more than six years in the hands of the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was born on April 29, 1949 in West Valley Cauca.
Throughout his career he has received over 20 awards, including the medal for the U.S. military. It has exerted efforts in command much of his country and has a Ph.D. in senior management at the University of the Andes, affirms its curriculum on the website of the army.
He continued studies at the Escuela Superior de Guerra, an advanced course of armoured vehicles at Fort Knox, United States, and served as military attaché in Britain.
A cable released in 1979 by the Washington embassy in Bogota, declassified at the request of the nongovernmental National Security Archive (NSA), United States, "reveals that a battalion of army intelligence linked to Colombian Montoya secretly created a unity between clandestine terrorist 1978 and 1979, "noted researcher Michael Evans in an article published in June 2007 in Week magazine.
"Under the facade of the American Anticommunist Alliance (AAA), the group was responsible for several dynamite attacks, kidnappings and assassinations against leftist groups during those years," he said.
Evans, a researcher at the NSA, also referred to the discovery in March 2007 of a mass grave in the department of Putumayo, with remains of more than 100 victims killed during the same period "in which Montoya led the Joint Task Force South , "Funded by the United States and charged with coordinating anti-narcotics and counterinsurgency operations in this region between 1999 and 2001."
"The declassified documents indicate the State Department's concern for the ties that had one of the units of the Joint Force, the 24 Brigade, commanded by Montoya, with paramilitary located in La Hormiga, where the mass grave was discovered," he added, referring to a town in Putumayo.
Montoya was head of the army's Fourth Brigade, with jurisdiction in the municipality of Bojayá, in the western department of Choco, when he committed the massacre of 119 civilians in the village of Bellavista, May 2, 2002.
Despite warnings made three days earlier on the imminent danger that ran the civilian population, the public security force was not present in the area, nor took action to protect the inhabitants.
On April 21, at least seven boats with some 250 of the extreme right paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) arrived in Bellavista and the neighboring Vigia del Fuerte, after passing through a roadblock standing in the Navy, one of the police and a third of the army in Riosucio, 157 kilometres north of Bellavista.
The paramilitaries were established in both towns, while the guerrillas of the FARC watched from rural areas.
On April 23, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the government its "concern" about the paramilitary incursion, and urged him to take measures to protect civilians. On 24 and 26, the Attorney General's Office and the Ombudsman's Office joined the warning.
On May 1 began fighting between the FARC and the AUC. More than 300 people took refuge in the Church of Bellavista, behind which is parapets paramilitaries. The next day, guerrillas hurled a pipette filled with explosive gas, which fell into the temple, killing 119 people, including 44 children, and leaving more than 100 wounded and maimed.
The army was present five days later. Survivors of that tragedy last year told IPS the arrival of General Montoya to the place and how, in front of TV cameras, wept by small dead, displaying a child's shoes of an expensive brand unknown for children in the area.
In May this year, an administrative court found in two rulings that the state is responsible for failing to protect the population, and ordered to pay a compensation of 1.552 million pesos (just over 870,000 U.S. dollars) to families of victims. There are still 14 other pending civil claims.
Military justice and failure to Procuratorate investigated by the military implicated in these events. But Montoya continued his career and was promoted, but shortly thereafter, in October 2002, would be involved in another controversial fact.
A report held by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), U.S., filtering the daily Los Angeles Times that country that issued it in March 2007, indicates that Montoya and a paramilitary group, the Cacique Nutibara Bloc, "planned and led a military operation to eliminate Marxist guerrillas from poor suburbs of Medellin, a city in northwestern Colombia that has been center of drug trafficking. "
The so-called Orion operation began at two in the early hours of October 15, 2002 in Comuna 13 in Medellin. At least 14 people were killed, and testimonials from residents and human rights organizations claim that some 50 more have disappeared in the weeks thereafter.
"We will continue, and what we are doing in the Comuna 13 is a strong message to violent, that is: desist, we will reach the whole country because the urban guerrilla war has no place in Colombia," said Montoya in a text dated October 21 on the website of the presidency of the country.
Shares of the Cacique Nutibara Bloc lasted two months in Comuna 13 and, according to testimony from demobilized, were coordinated with the authorities.
The intelligence report includes information from the CIA in other Western spy services and indicates that U.S. officials have received similar reports from other reliable sources, according to journalists Greg Miller and Paul Richter, who wrote the article in the LA Times.
The report was filtered to the newspaper by a source who agreed to be identified only as an employee of the U.S. government. The CIA did not confirm nor denied the information, but asked the newspaper not to publish certain details.
In addition to its close collaboration with U.S. officials on Plan Colombia, financed by Washington to combat drug trafficking and insurgency, Montoya was an instructor of the former School of the americas, known since 2001 Institute for Cooperation on Hemispheric Security.
On Wednesday night, when the government presented on television how it was planned and executed the rescue operation, Betancourt and 14 other hostages, President Alvaro Uribe disclosed that Montoya was the operational commander of the successful mission, and recalled welcomed, although without comment, the operation in Comuna 13 in Medellin.
Uribe said that he had arrived that day messages from members of the security forces who indicated that prisoners were "wrongly", and asked him to "advocate for us."
"This is a statement of opinion," said Uribe and called on humanitarian organizations: "Crean in Colombia, in this government, this respect for human rights in this operation is not episodic."
For the judges, the president asked them "respectfully" to review the cases of military prisoners and "where suddenly has an error is corrected."
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